Add subsection about Free software to intro

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Xiretza 2020-03-31 14:39:33 +02:00
parent d662561c36
commit 67808579e4
Signed by: xiretza
GPG key ID: E51A6C6A1EB378ED
2 changed files with 21 additions and 2 deletions

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@ -1,3 +1,10 @@
@online{fsf-definition,
author = {Free Software Foundation},
title = {What is free software?},
url = {https://www.fsf.org/about/what-is-free-software},
urldate = {2020-03-31},
}
@online{nandgame,
author = {Olav Junker Kjær},
title = {The Nand Game},

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@ -6,8 +6,7 @@ design a computer consisting of seperate plug-in cards, one instruction would
residing on each. This would open up the ``black box`` of modern processor
design, showing the basic components at a macroscopic scale.
For most of today's processors, documentation only exists for the execution of
programs (the runtime), not for their internals. The project's aim was later
The project's aim was later
redirected due to concerns about difficulty, and an FPGA-based design was opted
for instead. After
several months of implementation time, the project was split into two parts: the
@ -21,3 +20,16 @@ The decision to use a RISC-V based processor was made at the beginning of the
project because the core architecture is well documented and modular, and because
almost any feature not implemented inside the processor can be emulated using
software instead.
\subsection{Free software}
\label{sec:free-software}
For most of today's processors, documentation only exists on the execution of
programs (the runtime), not for their internals. In order the have the biggest
possible educational potential, this project is entirely "Free as in speech":
All involved software and hardware designs, as well as all the tools and
utilities required to create them, comply with the Free Software Foundation's
definition for Free software~\cite{fsf-definition}. They give the users the
rights to share, study and modify them at their will. In this thesis, the
capital-F ``Free'' is used to refer to this definition rather than the
meaning of ``free of charge'' or ``gratis''.